Originally the lamp had an attached control panel for color and speed adjustment. Then one day I found a perfect IR remote control with Power, R/G/B, and Up/Down buttons and even a built-in switchable backlight! I decided this would be a fun and functional addition so I wasted no time hacking the IR output signal and interfacing it to the controller.

The lamp starts out in white-light mode (like a normal ceiling light). At the press of a button, it switches to RGB Color Fading. From here, you can adjust the speed with the Up/Down buttons or even pause the color at any point in the RGB fading cycle.

Hopefully this instructable will give you some construction ideas or inspiration for your own large-scale RGB LED project!

Excellent instructable! I'm thinking about building something similar. Quick questions before I jump into getting the parts together: are you able to properly illuminate your room with this setup or is it more of an ambient light? How big is your room? How's the colour temperature on full brightness? Is it very "sterile" or can you produce comfortable lighting for, say, a living room?Thanks, Tobias

Hi, Thanks for looking! To answer your question - the light from my lamp is pretty "sterile", although I didn't spend a lot of time trying to optimize for color temperature. I use this daily in a 14x16 ft. bedroom for getting dressed, etc and it works well. When it comes to reading, though, I prefer a desk lamp. I think it could work for a living room with more time/care spent on tweaking the color temperature more LEDs or better positioning. You can also use two sets of LEDs - buy some nice "Warm" ones for white-light mode, and use cheap RGB oness for different colors.

Hey, thanks for the comment! You're right, I distinctly left out details of how to power the logic... I went back and updated the schematic and instructable just now. I used the +30V power supply to power the LEDs, and for the logic +5V I used an LM7805 linear voltage regulator with a 12V zener diode (reverse biased) in series with the input. The zener knocks the 30V down to 18V for the input to the LM7805, which makes the regulator happier. Good luck, and have fun!

Couldn't we just buy RGB LED strips for the underside of cars, hook up a power adapter? Also are you sure cardboard is a wise choice? I suppose if the LED's don't produce a lot of heat (some do) it would be alright.

Hi TXTCLA55, I wanted to make sure I had enough light output to make this a functional ceiling light, so that's why I went for the super high brightness LEDs. I have never used the automotive LED strips, so I can't really say how well they'd work...

Corrugated cardboard actually did work well because it is fairly rigid and also very lightweight. To reduce heat concerns, the LEDs were each mounted on to heatsinks and elevated above the cardboard on plastic spacers to allow for airflow (see pics in Step 6).

i just wasn't sure if just faded through the primary's or if it had all the colors along the way. The reason i ask is i know it takes considerably more work to make it fade smoothly through all the colors.

The lamp is capable of individual 10-bit brightness control for each color, so it can potentially produce millions of colors. Currently, though, the lamp color fade routine uses only 2 out of the three primary colors at any given time (see "PWM Control" section of step 5).

nerd1701 - you got me to thinking... I could potentially add another 10-bit counter to the code that will cycle the third color through the full 10-bit brightness scale. This would unleash the full potential of individual 10-bit RGB brightness control. I might just do that... I'll be sure to update the instructable if I do!